Bone Machines

This study concerns itself with studying the ways in which various texts both examine and display the effects of technology as manifested by automobiles, trains, and computers as well as the change such inventions have brought about socially and economically. Balanced against such considerations is a discussion of nature and the ways in which technology impacts the natural environment. The tension between technology and nature results in industrial tension, which becomes increasingly important in literature. This work posits and examines the pastoral-industrial text, a text that characteristically displays the conflicts and problems of industrial tension. Finally, the study argues that even the ways in which we read texts and that texts ask us to read them not only result from industrial tension but directly reflect specific views towards the industrial and the natural. Chapter one examines the onset of industrialism in eighteenth century England. Chapter two looks at industrialism in nineteenth-century America and the influence of the locomotive and car. Chapter three focuses on the first half of twentieth-century American literature and the continuing impact of the automobile. The final chapter considers hypertextuality in a variety of eras and geographic locations. This study presents itself as an expansive introduction to many literary considerations and representations of industrialism and some of its myriad offshoots rather than as an exhaustive analysis of one author's or genre's handling of a single aspect of industrialism. Consequently, this text is not intended as the final word on these subjects but as a thorough introduction.